No Such Thing as Perfect Security, Only Varying Levels of Insecurity

August 12, 2022 12:08 PM

Author Salman Rushdie attacked on lecture stage in New York [AP]

Author Salman Rushdie attacked at western New York event and a suspect is in custody, police say [CNN]
Salman Rushdie: author in surgery after being stabbed in New York – live [Grauniad]

posted by chavenet (47 comments total)

Thanks for the update. I heard about the attack soon after it happened. This is the first I heard specifics on the injuries and that Rushdie is in surgery.
posted by Thorzdad at 12:36 PM on August 12, 2022 [2 favorites]

Rushdie was (is?) a fancy special professor of literature at Emory University (they even have a room in the library that is basically a shrine to him, lol). I didn't know this when I was a grad student there, however, and was too deep in my work to notice things like announcements of his eminence coming to campus to give some classes. Standing outside of the library one day, smoking, chatting with others, I saw someone walking by and said a bit too loudly: that guy looks like Salman Rushdie, and he heard me and smiled as my friend said something like: that *is* Salman Rushdie, dumbass. Rushdie kept walking. Anyway I hope he survives.
posted by dis_integration at 12:47 PM on August 12, 2022 [40 favorites]

So awful. Really really really hoping he makes it.
posted by bitteschoen at 12:58 PM on August 12, 2022 [1 favorite]

That's a great anecdote, dis_integration. In his brilliant memoir he tells another one of a time when he was spotted when the police where trying to disguise him so that he could go out (the entire book is narrated in the third person):

The police had suggested a wig. Their best wig man had been to see him and taken a sample of his hair. He was extremely dubious but had been reassured by several of the prot officers that wigs really worked. “You’ll be able to walk down the street without attracting attention,” they said. “Trust us.” He received unexpected confirmation of this from Michael Herr. “In the matter of disguise you don’t have to change much, Salman,” Michael said, speaking slowly and blinking rapidly. “Just the key signs.” The wig was made and arrived in a brown cardboard box looking like a small sleeping animal. When he put it on his head he felt outlandishly stupid. The police said it looked great. “Okay,” he said, dubiously. “Let’s take it for a walk.” They drove him to Sloane Street and parked near Harvey Nichols. When he got out of the car every head turned to stare at him and several people burst into wide grins or even laughter. “Look,” he heard a man’s voice say, “there’s that bastard Rushdie in a wig.” He got back into the Jaguar and never wore the wig again.

That book (Joseph Anton) is a really fantastic read.

I too hope he makes it.
posted by micayetoca at 1:08 PM on August 12, 2022 [35 favorites]

This has really shocked me. I’m trying to keep the human being in mind, but aside from his personhood, Salman Rushdie has long since become a symbol for the writer who stands up to tyranny.

This is too symbolic a horror for me to parse. He was in a quiet, small town, taking part in a discussion with Henry Reese, who founded of the City of Asylum program for persecuted writers, and someone then attacks him.

I keep thinking about the chapter from Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent, where Vladimir explains to Verloc that, to really shake people, an act of terror must be aimed at something symbolic, that a mere human being won’t do.

And that links me back to the human being, because Conrad is one of Rushdie’s favorite authors. I hope he recovers, that he’ll have plenty of time to rest and recuperate and read his favorite books.

Being a writer, this has shaken me. Being someone who loves literature, this has shaken me. Being someone who thinks that people, whoever they may be, should be able to live without the threat of random violence, this has shaken me.

I hope he lives, and I hope he lives well, and for a long time yet.
posted by Kattullus at 1:33 PM on August 12, 2022 [72 favorites]

After Charlie Hebdo, you realize how lucky Rushdie has been since very recently.
posted by alex_skazat at 1:43 PM on August 12, 2022 [11 favorites]

I don’t know if it’s possible to overstate how chilling it is that this attack took place at an event where Rushdie and Henry Reese were discussing the Cities of Asylum Network, and that several of the writers who are in residence because they’ve had to leave their own countries after receiving escalating threats to their own lives were in attendance. I’m thinking of all of them, as well as Rushdie and Henry Reese, and wondering what this is going to mean for what is still a fairly small nonprofit organization whose in-person programs have only recently begun to resume.
posted by Anita Bath at 2:00 PM on August 12, 2022 [26 favorites]

This is really upsetting. Wishing for a quick recovery.
posted by obfuscation at 2:03 PM on August 12, 2022 [1 favorite]

The New Yorker reposted an article from 2012 by Rushdie: "Salman Rushdie on the Fatwa That Endangered His Life".
posted by riruro at 2:05 PM on August 12, 2022 [2 favorites]

What a horrifying attack. It's hard to overstate how chilling the fatwa and threats against Rushdie were in the late eighties / early nineties; I was in elementary school but even we were aware of it. Awareness of his position had lessened over the years but this will obviously put it back in the spotlight.

Full disclosure: I tried to read The Satanic Verses in college and couldn't make it more than a hundred pages. It just wasn't my thing.
posted by fortitude25 at 2:22 PM on August 12, 2022 [6 favorites]

Better a wig than a Tory.
posted by Bee'sWing at 2:26 PM on August 12, 2022 [4 favorites]

New York police just named the suspect in the attack on Salman Rushdie as Hadi Matar, a 24-year-old from New Jersey. He had access for the event where the author was speaking, and officials believe he was acting alone.

There were no previous threats before the event, authorities said, there is not yet any indication of the motive of Rushdie’s attacker.

Authorities are currently working to determine charges against Matar, police said in a press conference on Friday afternoon.

[Grauniad]
posted by chavenet at 2:42 PM on August 12, 2022

Full disclosure: I tried to read The Satanic Verses in college and couldn't make it more than a hundred pages. It just wasn't my thing.

It is kind of an odd book, some of it is good but I don't think it all gels together completely. Midnight's Children is an absolute masterpiece though, one of the very best books I've ever read.

I'm quite shook up by this attack - gonna be good to step out here in a few minutes and go have drinks with friends, get away from the news scrolling.
posted by dnash at 2:43 PM on August 12, 2022 [4 favorites]

" This country is absurd with its sentimental regard for individual liberty...England must be brought into line. The imbecile bourgeoisie of this country make themselves the accomplices of the very people whose aim is to drive them out of their houses to starve in ditches. And they have the political power still, if they only had the sense to use it for their preservation. I suppose you agree that the middle classes are stupid? […] What they want just now is a jolly good scare. This is the psychological moment to set your friends to work."

-Joseph Contrad. The Secret Agent, chap.2
posted by clavdivs at 2:48 PM on August 12, 2022 [7 favorites]

vigilantism spreads like a virus.
posted by NoThisIsPatrick at 3:10 PM on August 12, 2022 [1 favorite]

Index on Censorship has just put up a bunch of pieces from its archives that are on (or by) Salman Rushdie.

He said this in 1996 (pdf):

Futurology can be defined as the science of being wrong about the future, and novelists are no better at this kind of speculation than anyone else. Bad news being more glamorous than good, dystopic predictions are far easier to come up with than optimistic ones, and have more apparent credibility. Trapped between indifference and persecution, looking increasingly anachronistic beside the new information technology, what chance of survival does literature have? It's easy to shrug despairingly and start preparing the obituaries.

And yet, I find myself wanting to take issue with this facile despair. It is perhaps the low-tech nature of the act of writing that will save it. Means of artistic expression that require large quantities of finance and sophisticated technology — films, plays, records — become, by virtue of that dependence, easy to censor and to control. But what one writer can make in the solitude of one room is something no power can easily destroy.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 4:11 PM on August 12, 2022 [40 favorites]

Thank you for sharing, mandolin.

What an act of brutality. What a cruel thing to happen to a 75-year-old.
posted by doctornemo at 4:19 PM on August 12, 2022 [5 favorites]

Josie Ensor: "Rushdie’s agent, Andrew Wylie, sent an update on his condition to NYT, saying Rushdie was on a ventilator and could not speak. “The news is not good," he said. "Salman will likely lose one eye; the nerves in his arm were severed; and his liver was stabbed and damaged.""
posted by Rumple at 4:36 PM on August 12, 2022 [2 favorites]

“Salman will likely lose one eye; the nerves in his arm were severed; and his liver was stabbed and damaged.” Barbarism.
posted by doctornemo at 5:32 PM on August 12, 2022 [4 favorites]

I might well read it a bit differently but I remember SV being perfectly fine sci fi with lit fic pretensions that nobody would have read if it weren't for... all this.
posted by wotsac at 5:49 PM on August 12, 2022 [1 favorite]

I might well read it a bit differently but I remember SV being perfectly fine sci fi with lit fic pretensions that nobody would have read if it weren't for... all this.

Duly noted, I guess
posted by Crane Shot at 6:04 PM on August 12, 2022 [8 favorites]

" nobody would have read if it weren't for... all this."

Funny how censorship can backfire.
posted by doctornemo at 6:38 PM on August 12, 2022 [4 favorites]

He is probably an addict, hoping to cash in, so he never has to come down

I find this statement mystifying given that Rushdie has been under a death threat (fatwa calling for his death) since 1989. It was issued by Ayatollah Khomeini. One of Rushdie’s translators was stabbed to death, another attacked, and one of his publishers was shot.
posted by warriorqueen at 7:11 PM on August 12, 2022 [19 favorites]

might well read it a bit differently but I remember SV being perfectly fine sci fi with lit fic pretensions that nobody would have read if it weren't for... all this.

Rushdie was a Booker prize winning author before he wrote the Satanic Verses. Pretty sure he was being read before the fatwa.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 7:44 PM on August 12, 2022 [30 favorites]

Midnight's Children didn't just win a Booker. In 1993, it won the Best Of The Booker and was chosen as the best Booker winner of all time.

Then the novel won it again in 2008.
posted by Ian A.T. at 11:35 PM on August 12, 2022 [11 favorites]

Thanks for posting this. It is such a horror.
Rushdie was a great writer and as dnash mentioned above, specially Midnight's Children is a masterpiece. I enjoyed The Satanic Verses, but I have a feeling that few people have read it, since no one ever mentions that it doesn't mock Islam as much as it mocks Ayatollah Khomeini, viciously.
After the fatwa, I feel his writing has lost something, and I don't blame him. I guess it goes to show the real torment of the terror.
I hope he comes through.
posted by mumimor at 11:42 PM on August 12, 2022 [8 favorites]

since no one ever mentions that it doesn't mock Islam as much as it mocks Ayatollah Khomeini, viciously.

This is true, but it also absolutely mocks Islam, crudely and on purpose, at length. He uses historically derogatory names for the prophet Muhammad, the archangel Gabriel, and the city of Mecca (naming it Jahilia, or "ignorance"); he names characters in a brothel after the prophet's wives, and so on. He did this with full awareness of what he was doing.

Now, this absolutely doesn't excuse how he's been treated, the attacks on his publishers and editors, as well as this recent horrific attack. He's a great and important writer. But let's not diminish the fact that he was openly and brazenly disrespectful in what he wrote (that was the whole point).

I hope he recovers and is able to continue writing, if he chooses to. But I'm also worried about the backlash against Muslims around the world when certain spheres of online thought latch onto this as a reason to, once again, direct their hate against Muslims in general. There's already plenty of Islamophobia being tossed around in the wake of the attack, despite the fact that many Muslims don't agree with what happened either.
posted by fight or flight at 3:58 AM on August 13, 2022 [5 favorites]

There was this very interesting opinion piece in the NYTimes yesterday, about how the Iranian regime needs hate towards the US to survive. The UK really should have been included in the article, because to a certain extent, it is a more central target than the US. I haven't checked recent stats, but at the time of the fatwa, Iran had the most USA-loving people in the entire Middle East. Whereas the UK are generally unloved, and there are the most absurd conspiracy theories about Queen Elizabeth (and it makes sense, but that is a whole other story). An award-winning fallen Muslim living in England was the perfect enemy for the Ayatollah, and he could be 100% certain that his targets would never read the book.
This is to contextualize the book in its age. Now, I haven't reread The Satanic Verses since I originally read it, which was before the fatwa, but as I read it then, the blasphemy/mockery made sense in it's context. It's a book about being a Muslim immigrant in Europe, and all the complexities that involves. Rushdie exposed the random and continuous racism as well as the rise of fundamentalist Islam and how those phenomena interact. I saw it very much as a story about how even an upper class well educated Indian in London such as Rushdie was treated as scum, and how that would have even happened to the Profet himself, if he had lived at the time. As I read it, even though Rushdie is an atheist, he was definitely an ally of Muslims, if not of fundamentalists. But this was just my reading at the time, before all that happened. And TBH, I don't think there can ever again be an unbiased reading.
For further reading, Hanif Kureishi's The Black Album is a novel about all of this, written after the fatwa. I highly recommend.

(I am not Muslim, but I have studied Islam).
posted by mumimor at 4:36 AM on August 13, 2022 [18 favorites]

let's not diminish the fact that he was openly and brazenly disrespectful in what he wrote (that was the whole point)

That should be completely irrelevant. All the religious "authorities" needed to say was "God is stronger than Salman Rushdie" or something similar. People have mocked religion since it first began, from Euripides to Voltaire to Monty Python (banned in Ireland, Italy, and Norway).

I'm sure much worse things have been written about Islam, with fewer consequences, than The Satanic Verses. The fatwa against Rushdie was much more a political action than a religious one. More equivalent to how Donald Trump's personal grievances are used to drive policy in the US.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 8:17 AM on August 13, 2022 [24 favorites]

Like mumimor, I have not read The Satanic Verses recently, but I strongly disagree that Rushdie’s goal or whole point was to disrespect Islam.

The main themes I remember are the nature of good and evil and (as usual for Rushdie) race and identity especially in the context of people caught between Indian and British culture.
posted by lumpy at 9:41 AM on August 13, 2022 [10 favorites]

let's not diminish the fact that he was openly and brazenly disrespectful in what he wrote (that was the whole point)

This is the tricky part of regarding someone else's fundamentalist alternate reality, those indoctrinated since birth, some more brutally loyal than others. Honoring their religious bind disrespects them as individuals and their natural rights, which are likewise disrespected by their abusive masters and peers alike, piggybacking on ancient lore using education as a weapon. The masters were not elected by the following, or chosen by any intelligent god, and the entire program is to worship under threatening social surveillance. If we want to respect them as persons we welcome them to a world where objectivity allows anyone to choose their beliefs, rather than guarding the door from the outside. Only native authors know enough to unlock their chains, and Rushdie is one of them.
posted by Brian B. at 9:52 AM on August 13, 2022 [7 favorites]

The Guardian is quoting Rushdie's agent as saying that he will probably lose an eye as a result of the attack.

There's no way this kind of cruelty and violence is justified, no matter how sharp the social/religious/political criticism involved.
posted by rpfields at 10:14 AM on August 13, 2022 [10 favorites]

the Iranian regime needs hate towards the US to survive

Man, you overthrow one democratically-elected government and replace it with a military dictatorship you teach torture to and people get all up in your grill.
posted by kirkaracha at 10:49 AM on August 13, 2022 [12 favorites]

There was this very interesting opinion piece in the NYTimes yesterday, about how the Iranian regime needs hate towards the US to survive.

An interesting piece on US-Iran relations that doesn't mention Mohammad Mosaddegh or Iran-Contra seems incomplete.
posted by kirkaracha at 10:54 AM on August 13, 2022 [5 favorites]

I agree, kirkaracha, but in the context of this thread, I'm thinking that it is fair to say that the Ayatollahs' legitimacy has always been shaky, and that they need external enemies to retain at least a thin veil of legitimacy.
posted by mumimor at 10:59 AM on August 13, 2022 [2 favorites]

The Guardian is quoting Rushdie's agent as saying that he will probably lose an eye as a result of the attack.

The Guardian is best known for its typos, but its non sequitur game is also strong: "He remained hospitalized Saturday and appeared likely to lose one eye after the nerves in an arm were severed and his liver was stabbed . . ."

A writer of Rushdie's subtlety would surely, eventually, enjoy the twisted anatomy of that sentence.
posted by Rumple at 11:05 AM on August 13, 2022 [5 favorites]

In the early 2000s I worked at Cody's Books in Berkeley, California, which had in 1989 sold The Satanic Verses when many other bookstores (especially the big chains) would not take the risk of doing so. Cody's got firebombed and pipebombed, yet kept selling the book. The owner of Cody's from that period, Andy Ross, wrote about the attack and its aftermath, including a short visit from Rushdie:

We also showed him the hole in the sheetrock above the information desk that had been created when the pipe bomb was detonated. One of the Cody’s staff, with characteristic irreverence, had written with a marker next to the damaged sheet rock: “Salman Rushdie Memorial Hole.” Salman shrugged his shoulders and said with his wonderful self-deprecating humor, “Well, you know some people get statues, —- and others get holes.”

That hole and annotation were still there when I worked there decades later. I remember looking up at it sometimes while working and being reminded: this is part of why we are here and why this job is important.
posted by brainwane at 1:23 PM on August 13, 2022 [48 favorites]

Several people died or suffered physical injury because of attacks on The Satanic Verses and on any person or institution who defended, translated, or promoted the book. Some of those people were Muslims.
posted by brainwane at 1:39 PM on August 13, 2022 [6 favorites]

he was openly and brazenly disrespectful in what he wrote (that was the whole point).

That is so unbelievably simplistic, and your characterization of the novel is really weird.

For example, he names characters in a brothel after the prophet's wives -- I mean, technically yes, but that gives a very inaccurate impression because you've stripped it of narrative context. It's not like Rushdie just wrote, "there was a brothel, and here are the names of the women who work there" and listed names that are identical to the prophet's wives' as a way to rile up readers who would get the references. Rushdie tells a story about a brothel where the women are called by the prophet's wives' names, which is very different than "naming characters after" them. In other words, within the context of the story, the brothel owner's action is recognized as an intentionally blasphemous act by other characters. Also, I'm pretty sure the name used for Mecca -- Jahilia -- is a term used in Islam to describe pre-Islamic society, and since that part of the novel is set prior to Muhammad's conquest of the city, it isn't necessarily a derogatory name. Finally, I know "Mahound" was a derogatory name used by Medieval Xians for Muhammad, but I have never read that "Gibreel" is a derogatory variation on "Gabriel," so I'm wondering where that came from.
posted by Saxon Kane at 3:49 PM on August 13, 2022 [18 favorites]

Hi. Indian-American writer and lit lover here.

Gibreel is simply the Indian version of the name Gabriel, probably derived from Persian (one of the many languages that influenced modern colloquial Hindi). It is absolutely 100% NOT a derogatory variation of Gabriel. It's a real Indian name. Gibreel's full name in the book is Gibreel Farishta. His last name, Farishta, is the Hindi/Urdu word for "angel". So, "Gibreel Farishta" is just a linguistic pun on "Gabriel Angel." Like, it's corny as hell. When I read the book and saw there was a character named Gibreel Farishta I groaned like I'd heard a Dad Joke.

The book is fine, Midnight's Children is a masterpiece. Rushdie is a complicated man who did not treat Padma Lakshmi well when they were married (whining about not getting laid while your wife is in recovery after five surgeries to treat extensive endometriosis that she had suffered from for nearly 30 years is not a good look, neither is getting resentful that your wife is a popular television figure on a wildly respected show (Top Chef) while you're suffering writer's block and saying cruel things about her "little cooking show" to her). But he's also a brilliant writer and fearless advocate so, you know. People contain multitudes. I've met the guy at an event when I was in college, he was very kind to me. He didn't deserve to be attacked, he's already been through hell. I am horrified by this, and I really hope he pulls through.
posted by nayantara at 4:52 PM on August 13, 2022 [45 favorites]

Rushdie is no longer on a ventilator and is able to talk again.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 9:32 PM on August 13, 2022 [22 favorites]

Police investigate threat to JK Rowling over Salman Rushdie tweet the Guardian

Rowling also called on Twitter to take action. She posted: “@TwitterSupport any chance of some support?”

The response from Twitter, Rowling said, was: “After reviewing the available information, we determined that there were no violations of the Twitter rules in the content you reported. We appreciate your help, and encourage you to reach out again in the future if you see any potential violations.”

Rowling responded by asking: “These are your guidelines, right? ‘Violence: You may not threaten violence against an individual or a group of people. We also prohibit the glorification of violence … Terrorism/violent extremism: You may not threaten or promote terrorism …’”

posted by mumimor at 6:34 AM on August 14, 2022 [2 favorites]

> He did this with full awareness of what he was doing. ... He's a great and important writer. But let's not diminish the fact that he was openly and brazenly disrespectful in what he wrote (that was the whole point).

> I hope he recovers and is able to continue writing, if he chooses to. But I'm also worried about the backlash against Muslims ... There's already plenty of Islamophobia being tossed around in the wake of the attack, despite the fact that many Muslims don't agree with what happened either.

This is a terrible way to talk about every single one of the issues you're talking about. By linking all these quite separate issues up into a single thesis in a couple of paragraphs, you end up making some horrifying arguments about each of them:

- You're victim-blaming Rushdie for bringing this attack on himself, by saying he was deliberately provoking people into attacking him when he chose to be disrespectful. So, so, so hateful.

- Even more egregiously (turns out that is possible!), you're suggesting that any Islamophobic backlash is also Rushdie's fault, because your chain of reasoning is: if only Rushdie had been more respectful he would not have provoked this attack, and there would not now be Islamophobes who blame all Muslims for the attack.

- Ironically, you are excusing and legitimizing Islamophobia by pleading #NotAllMuslims. Do you really think Islamophobic oppressions justified when enacted against Muslims who agree with the Fatwa and cheer the attack? Because that's what you said. In so many words.

Here's the thing: I can look behind your horrible words and see where you're coming from. I can see what you're anxious about and what you're trying to say.

- Rushdie being deliberately disrespectful towards Islam feels rather wrong to you, just on pure principle. You'd like him to admit he was wrong to be so disrespectful and apologize and promise to be more sensitive in the future. Because that's what good people should do. And maybe there would be room for you to start that conversation.... if we lived in a world where there was no fatwa on him, where none of his publishers or editors had been murdered, and where he himself hadn't just gotten stabbed nearly to death and maimed for life for writing the things he wrote. But we do not live in that world. In our world, you need to grind this particular ax on some other writer, necessarily one who has not been violently victimized for decades by the institution they have said mean things about. To fault Salman Rushdie for being uncouth or whatever is ghoulish.

- You don't like it when famous writers with huge platforms use their reach to attack oppressed minority religions. Okayyy. That's a halfway decent conversation you are allowed to start -- and hopefully during that conversation you would learn to stop expecting the whole world to center your personal cultural context, and that Islam isn't an oppressed minority religion everywhere in the world, and Salman Rushdie is in fact speaking truth to power - in his world - when he disrespects Islam.

- Islamophobia doesn't sit right with you. GREAT. Start that conversation, or better yet, follow the lead of Muslims who have started those conversations in your country, within the context of your culture. I guarantee they have helpful resources for people like you who are looking for meaningful ways to be an active ally to Muslims in your community. I also guarantee that they are not in need of your opinions on how the attack on Rushdie worsens Islamophobia. I guarantee they do not need your contribution to their cause if that contribution is in the form of expressing this particular opinion online.


> I strongly disagree that Rushdie’s goal or whole point was to disrespect Islam.


As someone who has read the book AND as someone who is familiar with Rushdie's life in general, I'm pretty sure it was one of his major goals to disrespect Islam. He was skewering it and being deliberately profane. He is speaking as a person who was raised within Islamic cultures all his life, someone with the reasons, the authority, and the right to disrespect the religion without being accused of anything untoward.

You would not fault someone who was raised Mormon, for instance, for writing a fictional lyrical novel that (among other things) viciously takes down aspects of the Mormon religion. Similarly here. He did what he intended to do and that should not be used as a condemnation of him or his motivations or his ethics or whatever.
posted by MiraK at 11:26 AM on August 14, 2022 [15 favorites]

admit he was wrong to be so disrespectful and apologize and promise to be more sensitive in the future.

For the record he actually did that, as is recalled here:

In February 1989, Rushdie expressed remorse, saying: ‘‘I profoundly regret the distress that publication has occasioned to sincere followers of Islam.” The words had little impact, however. In June 1989 Khomeini died, but the fatwa lived on under his successor, the current supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, and there appeared to be a renewed effort to put it into effect. Later that month, a Guinean-born Lebanese man, calling himself Mustafa Mazeh, blew himself up in a hotel in Paddington, west London, preparing a bomb to kill Rushdie.

In 1990, Rushdie again expressed remorse, said he embraced the Islamic faith, did not agree with views expressed by characters in the novel and opposed the book’s publication in paperback. But Khamenei rejected the apology, quoting his predecessor as saying: “Even if he repents and becomes the most pious Muslim on Earth, there will be no change in this divine decree.”

...In 1997, a reformist Iranian president, Sayyid Mohammad Khatami, took office and began signalling that he would no longer actively seek to execute the fatwa on Rushdie, or encourage anyone to kill him, as part of an opening to the west and a restoration of diplomatic relations with Britain.

Rushdie expressed relief at the assurances offered by Khatami’s government, and said he had no regrets over his book, even after spending a decade in hiding.

“The Satanic Verses is as important in my body of work as any of my other books,” he said. He recanted his 1990 claim to embrace Islam, admitting he had said it to get the fatwa lifted. Asked if he was a Muslim, he replied: “I am happy to say that I am not.”

He has called his effort to appease extremists by affirming his faith and calling for the withdrawal of the book the “biggest mistake of my life”.

posted by bitteschoen at 12:10 PM on August 14, 2022 [7 favorites]

Journalist Negar Mortazavi:

Prominent Iranian opposition religious thinkers issue statement condemning the “violent terrorist attack” on Salman Rushdie, from religious and ethical viewpoints. They say this violence is a result of fundamentalist readings of Islam and contradicts the worldview of most Muslims

2. The statement also adds:
The vast majority of experts in Islamic studies have long been relentlessly and decisively rejecting such a confused and polluted image of Islam, arguing against it based on rational rules, verses of the Quran, and credible Islamic sources.

3. They add:
We stand with the victims of terror and say out loud that we are infidels to an Islam that allows terror. We loudly say that fundamentalist Islam doesn’t represent the overwhelming majority of Muslims. We condemn authoritarian states who support Islamic terrorism.
posted by Rumple at 10:58 PM on August 14, 2022 [8 favorites]

Thanks, everyone, for your insights. I made tinyurl.com/mefisalman and put the url in my copy of Satanic Verses for when I read it.
(I started it c. 2002 but was working 10-12 hours a day and didn't get very far in. I've read MC and a bunch of short stories. Currently re-reading East, West.)
posted by neuron at 9:33 AM on August 17, 2022

Deutsche Welle English just re-upped its 2018 documentary: Salman Rushdie - Writing under death threats.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 11:19 AM on August 25, 2022